my father passed away recently and my brother is the executioner of his will. recently i received a copy of the will and to my utmost chagrin i found out that i did not inherit any shares of my father microsoft stock that he purchased in the late 1980s and is worth quite a bit of money since it had split many times since. My father mentioned that stock to me before he succombed to Alzheimer’s. i have 2 questions: 1-assuming that the stock was issued as a certificate and was not registered with a brokerage firm , is there a way to verify the existence of such stock and the number of shares my dad owned? 2-is there a way to find out if and when the shares were traded? 3-are there any professionals out there like private investigators or lawyers that can help track that stock? BTW i cannot ask my mom because she also passed away and my only brother is not communicating on this issue!
Your brother is the “executor”, not the “executioner” of the will. I hope.
Only a tiny fraction of the all the shares in all the companies in modern times have ever been in the form of a physical piece of paper. Unless you have some specific knowledge to the contrary, the odds are very, very slim that his shares were / are on paper.
I don’t have any more factual information to share, but I wish you good luck. Siblings fighting over the spoils of their parents’ lives is very common, and always unpleasant for all involved.
Did your dad have a brokerage account? If so, they likely have records of his holdings.
Also, Microsoft generally pays dividends. Where were these dividends going?
The payment of dividends and the gain (or loss) on any stock sales are taxable events. Who did your dad’s taxes? Where are copies of his returns? Because probably filed with his personal copy of the return are the 1099-DIV forms that would list what his dividend income was. These would be issued either by his broker (if the stock is held there) or by Microsoft if he held the stock personally. In either case they’d list the number of shares held.
You could tell your brother to tell you, or you will start to take up your rights under the state law to do something…
Eg have him stripped of being executor. Which may mean that the estate pays some % to an executor appointed by the state…
You are probably in the situation that the favoured child has been favoured financially…
Isn’t the executor required to prepare an inventory of the estate?
Yes, generally, everything an executor does has to be documented.
Otherwise, you might be forced to use a lawyer to challenge his behavior and ask for a full accounting of all accounts and securities held and the disposition thereof.
Exactly, if your brother pulled a fast one and took the shares, there will be a record of the transfer somewhere… Including dad’s tax returns (unless bro neglected to properly document this…)
Legal advice is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I would contact an attorney to get advice. I’m not saying you need to have the attorney contact your brother or make threats to sue, but they can best advise you here.
Just from my experience, people don’t keep actual paper stock certificates any longer. The stock is likely held in a brokerage account, and there would be a statement of that account. So talked with an attorney so you can be advised on how to proceed to find out what is going on. Make sure you get a good attorney, not the cheapest per hour you can find, because some of them here “Will” and “Estate” and want to charge you $12K to run everything through probate which it might not be necessary at all. Also, only go with an attorney that is going to charge you by the hour, not a percentage of some fixed huge fee.
Does the will explicitly leave the stock elsewhere, or does it simply not mention the stock at all.
There’s a big difference between “I leave the house and Microsoft shares to BigBrother, LittleBrother gets the car and not a penny more”, and “I leave everything to be split evenly between BigBrother and LittleBrother”.
If the former, it doesn’t matter whether there are any shares or not. If the latter, you definitely need to know.